Fragment (detail), by Karen Navarro, whose work is on view this month in the exhibition Slowed and Throwed, at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston © The artist. Courtesy Foto Relevance, Houston

“Do you know why I always beat you, Daddy?” a Californian eighth grader named Sarah asks her father over chess. “Because you hate to lose pieces. . . . You can’t protect everybody. You just have to get the better of it or get the position you want.” It’s an especially ominous observation in Percival Everett’s new work, Telephone (Graywolf, $16), a novel already riddled with…